The present invention relates to a method of administering the licensing of use of copyright works.
Worldwide there exist a number of Collective representation bodies (e.g. Collection Societies) who act on behalf of the owners of copyright in, for instance, musical works by granting licenses on behalf of the copyright owners and collecting royalties on behalf of the rights holders. For instance, the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society Limited licenses musical works to companies wishing to produce compact discs incorporating the musical works for sale to the general public. At present an application for a license is typically made on paper, the license application then processed using a manual system, the license granted by written communications on paper and then royalties collected.
More recently, it has become common practice for digital video and digital audio signals to be transmitted via a telecommunications network, e.g. the Internet, and this is described, for instance in U.S. Pat. No. 5,675,734. It has been realised that the advent of such electronic transfer of music could not be easily dealt with by the existing licensing system, for instance because it is likely that the low costs of producing sound recordings for sale via the Internet will lead to the advent of a greater number of smaller producers of sound recordings, all of whom must be licensed and regulated by collective representation bodies on behalf of the rights holders.